There's no doubt going the buddy box route is the proper thing to do. No disrespect intended with the previous post. After reading this forum for a while, I know 3 gallons of flight time is a drop in the bucket of most of the pilots posting here. And I'm sure no matter how much SIM practice is done, I'm bound to crash and burn a plane one of these days. I kind of feel like I got away with one on that first flight. It's a strange mix of ignoranance, naivette, stupidity, luck and guts I can wear for the rest of my RC days. It's borderline childish, but what the hell...these are model airplanes.